Here I am, living in Maine, making friends and generally having a ball, while so many people in the world live in poverty and misery. Shouldn’t I be doing some serious service work in, say, Africa or Guatemala? I know I can be of service to others wherever I find myself, simply by opening my heart. But still.

I’ve met a number of people who have changed lives through their work: the director of a program for homeless women in Portland, Oregon; another who moved to the Peruvian Amazon and found a way to deliver safe drinking water to indigenous jungle communities; another who works with street kids in India. Why haven’t I sunk myself into something like that? The obvious answer: I like my comfortable existence, a lot. I’m scared that if I leave it, I’ll never get it back. But if I did jump into the fire, if I upended my life and took that chance, would my efforts really make a difference? How would I ever know?

This is the point at which I start thinking about Gwenn Mangine.

Gwenn’s story began in 2005, when she was at a church service in Carey, North Carolina. That day a group of visitors were giving a presentation about abandoned children in Jacmel, Haiti. As Gwenn listened, idly at first, it occurred to her that she’d been wanting to find a way to help the world’s poor. You might say she was called, which is how she puts it. Four years later, after numerous mission trips to Haiti, Gwenn and her husband, Nick, moved to Jacmel to take over a children’s home run by a Christian organization.

It was not an orphanage but a real home where the Mangines lived with their biological son and daughter, an adopted Haitian son, and the nine Haitian children for whom they had been given legal custody. These were kids who otherwise would have been begging in the streets or living in restavèk, the Creole word for slavery. “The statistics about Haiti are sobad,” Gwenn said. “Twenty-two percent of the kids are orphaned, abandoned, or in restavèk.”

The first time we spoke, over a long cup of coffee, Gwenn told me mind-boggling stories about her and Nick’s experiences in Jacmel. The challenges of running a household with 14 people were myriad, even with plenty of domestic help. And while the Mangines could keep the children in their care safe, their hearts hurt for those they could not. Once they tried to rescue an enslaved girl who bore long scars on her face from a whip. She also had a bad burn from an electrical cord, inflicted as punishment. When the girl escaped and found her way to them, the Mangines petitioned a local court to grant them custody. The judge told them he had no choice but to return her to her mother, who immediately gave her back to her abuser. “Children have rights in Haiti,” the judge said, “when their parents grant them rights.”

The Mangines found they had to concentrate on the children they could help and try not to tie themselves in knots about those they couldn’t. Every day new challenges arose. Among their charges were kids who had lost families in the 2010 earthquake, who had been neglected and, in some cases, sexually abused. One boy had lived on the street for four years. With the Mangines the children found stability and safety—most of the time. One summer night Gwenn and Nick awoke in their bedroom to find bandits pointing guns at them. They surrendered their cash and beefed up security at their home. “Are we missionaries or are we humanitarians?” Gwenn mused during one of our conversations. “I really believe a mix of the two is the sweet spot.”

But in time the Mangines began to question their decision to live in Haiti. They increasingly wondered if their Haitian children would ever be able to reintegrate into the local culture.

Time was passing; the children were growing up. To prepare one of the older girls to live on her own, Gwenn decided to help her start a business selling fresh juices. One day when they went to the market to buy fruit, Gwenn realized that the girl didn’t know how to barter, an essential skill in Haitian society. She had never had to shop for food before. All her meals had been provided at the home.

Unlike traditional Haitian families, the Mangines celebrated each child’s birthday with a party, and they put on a fairly typical American Christmas, with gifts and lots of food. They had flush toilets and a constant supply of electricity. How could Nick and Gwenn prepare them for the typical Haitian life they’d face when grown?

Their decision was forced when, after six years, Nick became gravely ill with acute appendicitis. He had no choice but to have surgery in a Port-au-Prince hospital—not something anyone would elect to do if there were other options. Afterwards the Mangines made the excruciating decision to move back to North Carolina with their two biological children and the two Haitian boys they’d fully adopted. They found stable homes for the other eight children with relatives in Haiti.

“We really thought we would be there for twenty years,” Gwenn said. “There’s been a lot of grief.” But with distance, she and Nick have come to see that coming home was the right decision. “There’s a lot of debate right now about exactly what a Haitian orphanage should be.” Her tone was more thoughtful than in our previous conversations. “We were able to help these children do a lot of healing, a lot of growing, and we were able to show them what a normal family life looked like. But we were seeing kids from traditional orphanages turn twenty and have to leave. They’d end up on the streets, not knowing how to live.”

More than anything, the Mangines’ time in Haiti taught them that there isn’t just one thing that children in poverty need. “They need everything,” Gwenn said. “You can’t give them that. You need to partner with others who can do different things than you.”

“If someone asked me today, what’s the best way to do this” — to give neglected children a chance for a good life in a poor, utterly dysfunctional society — “I’d say, this is my current theory.” Give them stability and a home, but make certain to help them learn the skills they need to live on their own. Create a network of people to help them, because no one person, or couple, can do it all.

Listening to Gwenn, I thought about how profoundly six years of life under her and Nick’s care must have helped those children. And I thought about the lessons her story holds for us all.

The calculus of serving others is infinitely complex. Over time today’s solutions may turn out to be no more solid than smoke. So a willingness to change course is one of the greatest traits we can cultivate.

Also, it’s absolutely fine to do as much as we can for as long as we can and no longer.

As I look for ways to involve myself more deeply in service, in my new home or elsewhere, I need to remember this. I can take my turn fanning the coals, so that the healing smoke of love wafts toward the heavens. But when my arms tire and I’m struggling to breathe, I must find the grace to let others take over—which is often the most difficult but vital step of all.

Ten years. A decade. A tenth of my life, if I should live to 100, more if not. It seems like a very long time since we lost Reid, our only child, in a car accident—and it also seems like yesterday. The arrival of mid-March always catapults us back to those early days. How could it not?

When a child dies, the void in the parents’ life yawns like a cosmic monster, a black hole that threatens to pull you in and devour you. To obliterate you. Moving away from that force, putting distance between myself and the event horizon (science’s term for the point of no return) was unquestionably the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It was so tempting just to let it take me. And who would blame me? But I beat it; over time I managed to break free. I consider this the greatest of my life’s achievements (though I know at any careless moment, I could drift back toward its deadly rim).

In the months after Reid was killed, I was desperate to find other bereaved parents so I could ask them: How long will it be until this grief loosens its grip? One father told me three years, another seven. Both answers leveled me. I couldn’t imagine living that long in such crushing pain.

But there were two people who gave me answers that did help me survive. They managed this simply, one with a kind observation and the other with a kind card.

The first was my cousin Lynn. On a beach walk one afternoon with Reid’s girlfriend, Lynn told us she couldn’t imagine the depths of our sadness—but she could tell us what she experienced when she was in her twenties and her roommate suddenly died. The grief would ambush her unexpectedly and drag her down, the way an ocean breaker will sometimes knock you off your feet and thrust you to the bottom. She learned that if she could relax and breathe through the anguish—just as she did when pulled down by a wave—eventually it would release her.

Although Reid had been gone only a week, I knew already what she was talking about: the sudden waves of grief, often at the oddest moments, always devastating. I was an avid ocean swimmer. I’d learned what to do when a breaker dragged me down. Living through this kind of take-down seemed much harder, though, and it raised the question of whether I wantedto live through it. A large part of me did not. Still, as the months and years continued, I thought often of Lynn’s rogue wave. I learned to breathe through the pain, sure that it would eventually release me.

The second answer came from a woman I didn’t know, in a sympathy card. She’d lost her sister. Her card included a simple diagram from a book about loss that illustrated how, in time, the sadness would grow less dominant.

The diagram showed a black ball the size of a dime, in three different boxes. The ball signified the presence of grief in a life, and it filled the first box out to the edges. There was no getting away from it. In the second box, which was a little larger, there was more white space—more light, more room to move. The third was even larger. The ball was still the same size, but it filled only a corner of the box. My grief—the ball—would never get any smaller, my unknown correspondent wrote. But my world would expand in ways I had never imagined.

She was right on one count: I couldn’t imagine in the least how Reid’s death would lead to an expansion of my world. At the moment it was too crushing. But I tucked the diagram in a book and kept it. And slowly, to my astonishment, my world grew.

It grew because of friends who wouldn’t let me drift back toward the event horizon. It grew because losing Reid launched me on a course of spiritual seeking that I’d dabbled with earlier in my life. And my world grew because my grief gave me insight into the lives of people who are suffering. I knew for the first time what they were feeling. Slowly I learned what is needed to comfort and help others heal—which is not at all what I would have predicted. A quiet presence. A willingness to see the pain and feel it too. Enough patience to let sufferers find their own way to peace.

I don’t know how people survive tragedies like the death of a child. I just know most of us do. To some extent I lived through it by learning how I might help others, and writing about it. That work has helped me heal, although I’m not always very good at helping. And three years out, as the first father I’d spoken with had predicted, I could feel my world growing lighter. I looked at the diagram and realized I’d reached the second box. There was some light around me. I could move without chafing every moment against my sorrow. At seven years, the grief was still as profound, but it occupied much less of my mind, and my world. I could scarcely believe it.

The piece of paper on which the diagram is drawn is square, about two inches across each side. Contemplating it one day not long ago, I realized that even the third box isn’t big enough to encompass my world now. Turning the paper over, I drew a fourth dime-sized ball, sitting in a small corner of my world—which takes up the whole sheet.

Ten years. A goodly proportion of my life. I’ve made a promise to myself: I will not let pain and grief rule my existence. This holds up most of the time, but not always. Ambushes still occur—like last month, when I heard a song that reminded me strongly of Reid. It had a sweet, sad melody. I burst into tears and went off by myself, trying to breathe through the pain, knowing it would eventually release me. Yesterday the opposite happened, something I hope I’ll remember the rest of my days.

I was standing in our snowy backyard, here in our new home in Maine. As is true most mornings, I’d gone outside to do some energy medicine exercises. Several days a week I also do a moving meditation that I call my happy dance, which probably looks a bit crazy but is immensely fun and soothing.

I was dancing, swinging my arms and hips in a figure eight pattern, turning in a slow circle, when I had the feeling that something was with me. Someone. I could sense a blue-green light swirling off it, around it, through it. No, not through it—the blue green shimmering was it. And I knew. We danced, Reid and I, melding our lights on the sunlit snow, whites and yellows spiraling through greens and blues, until my thoughts were clear and joyful and my soul was filled. We will dance that way forever, my son and I, through my life and beyond, sowing love, besting the blackness.

If you are familiar with the book on grief from which the black ball diagram was taken, please let me know. I’d love to credit the author.

I gave a little start when those words flashed onto the screen during a presentation by the poet Elizabeth Bradfield. Liz was in the process of describing six-word stories, modeled on Hemingway’s heartbreaking For sale: Baby shoes. Never used. The photograph showed a wall from the 6 Words Minneapolis project, in which city residents were asked to briefly describe themselves. This entry spoke directly to an experience I’d been having of late but hadn’t quite been able to name.

Consider: I smile at a young couple who are walking with their baby out of the grocery store as I enter. Their eyes flit briefly over my face and body without expression.

Waiting in a loose group of people for service at a food truck—there doesn’t seem to be a line—the fellow taking orders looks straight at me and then asks the guy in back of me what he’d like.

In a park a young couple finishes a photo shoot for their engagement pictures and walk toward me on a narrow gravel path. I smile and say, “Beautiful day.” They squint and pass by as if they’ve heard a noise but can’t place what it might be.

Every time this happens, it shocks me. I’m not that old! A little wrinkled, yes, but not even close to elderly.

True, I can’t know exactly what was going on in any of these instances. Maybe the couple with the baby was merely exhausted and moving through life like zombies. Maybe the man behind me at the food truck had somehow gotten there first. The couple in the park—that one’s hard to explain away. I was right in front of them. But perhaps they didn’t hear me.

I guess I have no right to be surprised, because at a younger age I behaved exactly the same way. Working for newspapers in my twenties, I counted myself among the young reporters who were (we flattered ourselves) the only ones doing cutting-edge journalism. We paid scant attention to articles by our colleagues older than 40—who, I realize now, had a great deal they could have taught us. The same was true in my 30s and even 40s when I was a freelance writer. Like many of my contemporaries, I wished the old fogeys would get out of the way and give us youngsters room to forge new ground.

I should have seen this coming.

Still, my new membership in society’s invisible masses comes as a shock. While I don’t have any studies to back this up, I suspect that older women are overlooked more frequently than older men. No surprise there.

On a subway one day, Jeff nudges me and nods toward two gray-haired women who stand hanging onto a pole, deep in conversation. There’s something about them—their stances, their passion as they talk—that exudes strength. “Are they invisible?” he asks. He’s been skeptical of my complaints and insistent that lots of women older than me are anything but unseen. I have to admit: He’s got a point with these two. I can’t hear their conversation, but I’d bet it’s about something important, maybe a social issue they passionately want to address. I wonder how I can get some of what they’ve got. Whatever it is, I want it.

Or maybe I already have it. While aging has made me a little less sure of myself in some ways, I trust my instincts more, and I’m much more grounded in my beliefs. I’m more aware of what’s going on around me. I wouldn’t make the same dumb mistakes I might have made at the height of my sex appeal—say, walking into a dark alley with a man I didn’t know well because I was too polite to object.

I can take solace in the fact that older women have a more vibrant role in society than ever before. Look at the number of women in Congress who are over 70. Many writers, artists, and actresses continue to work into their 70s and 80s, even their 90s. I don’t have to quietly fade away unless I choose to. And something tells me I won’t.

I wish I could meet the woman who penned that six-word story. There’s a lot more to it than the word “invisible,” and I find myself nodding my head each time I reread it. Yes, I’m beautiful now inside and out, in a way I’ve never been before. I’m calmer and more forgiving of those around me, and of myself. I’m better at not getting dragged into the drama of others’ lives. I often say I wouldn’t trade this body for my twenty-year-old self unless I could retain all the lessons life has taught me. Beauty without wisdom holds no appeal.

I think back to the times in junior high and high school when I did everything possible to blend in, mostly from an insecurity I no longer feel. There’s a freedom to being unremarkable, I suppose. It just never occurred to me that as I aged, this role would be handed to me, rather than chosen by me.

Even if society’s default mode is to relegate me to the background, I still have plenty of options. I can find ways to push my way forward—like I did at a seminar last week, when a well-known horticulturist dismissed me after I’d said hello to him. He smiled at me and turned to greet the older man beside me. “I have a question,” I announced firmly, which brought the horticulturist up short and his attention graciously back to me.

Or, depending on my mood, I can settle for the contentment that I’ve earned. I’ve fought on the front lines in plenty of battles. I’ll probably insert myself into a few more before my days here are through. To my surprise, though, most of the time now I find that I’m happy for someone else to steer the starship. This goes hand-in-glove with one of the lessons that keeps getting thrown at me: Acceptance of what life presents me with—and forgiveness of those who overlook me—is a lot easier than fighting things I have no chance of changing.

Back here I can quietly take stock of each new situation. I more readily notice people like me and other overlooked folks. What can they teach me? Calmer, quieter, and no longer constantly seeking the spotlight, I find I have nothing to prove. I can simply be. Isn’t this peacefulness what I longed for in my earlier years? How can I use it now to do the kinds of things I couldn’t accomplish with energy and verve in my younger life?

This is my heart’s new work—part of it, anyway. The rest is encompassed in my own six-word story:

Forgiveness begets peace.

Infuriating, but true.

This post was originally published on the web site Tiny Buddha, and you can find it here.

What would your six-word story be? You can find more examples of this project, carried out in Minneapolis in 2012, by searching on the Web for 6 Words Minneapolis. A couple of other examples:

Her name was Laxmi, and she had long, dark hair and intense gray eyes. A wicker basket was strapped to her back to hold the driftwood she was collecting from the beach. These were special pieces, carefully chosen for how they would fit into the sculpture garden she was building at the yoga ashram where she lives.

I’d seen her on this beach before. She was, she told me, choosing to live apart from the negative energy plaguing the rest of the world. “You have no idea what that can to do your body,” she said. In the ashram she was free to see people as they really were. She was free to become her true self. “You should visit sometime,” she said.

I told her I might, though I suspected I wouldn’t.

We wished each other well, and I rejoined my two friends, who had continued to wander up the beach. “Did you get her life story?” Nancy joked.

I grinned. “What do you think?”

It’s one of the things I do best, getting people’s stories, though I don’t purposely set out to do it. People just tell me about themselves; I’m not sure why. But I love it.

Maybe it has something to do with my journalism background. Through reporting I learned how to ask people simple questions, and how to listen for their responses—not the off-the-cuff answers, but the real ones. I discovered how hungry we all are to talk about our lives. So I ask a question or two, and most people answer. How often do any of us have a chance to really be heard?

Mary Lee Wile, a deacon at our new church sometimes goes to public events with a sign that says “Free Listening.” She’s amazed by what people tell her, and the depths of their stories. But as she says, it’s much easier to tell your secrets to a stranger. You can talk without fear of consequence. Imagine being able to unburden your heart, to speak out loud all that you’ve been afraid to say! There are many people with whom I wouldn’t share the simplest thing about myself. But I think I could tell my darkest thoughts and greatest fears to Mary Lee. How can I be as open and loving as she is?

Once many years ago, a girlfriend gave me a long hug and said, “I can tell you anything, and you don’t judge me!” This left me speechless. I never confessed that her story was so outlandish, and her behavior so risky, that I was simply at a loss for words. Silence may be golden, but often it’s mistaken for complicity. Still, nothing I might have said was likely to change what she was doing.

And where lies the line between wanting simply to be heard and seeking helpful advice? This is the trickiest question of all. I had nothing wise I could have offered my friend. I was too young. She was too headstrong. Maybe by keeping quiet I helped her more than I realized.

This question still plagues me as I listen to stories, whether from friends or strangers. I want so badly to help. But too often I’m afraid that anything I say will be taken as lecturing. The kindest thing I can do is to shake off the idea that I know how to fix the person’s problem.

All these thoughts about listening and being heard came together last week when I went with a friend to a theatrical performance by the nonprofit group Maine Inside Out, run for and by young people who have been incarcerated and released. Ten or so men and one woman acted out short scenes illustrating what they’d felt during their arrests and incarceration. It was not uplifting, except for the parts where they talked or sang about how much support they’d gotten from each other.

After the show we were invited to mingle with the performers. My friend and I were standing on the sidelines when a performer named Peter walked right up to us and began talking. Peter was in his early twenties. He told us he’d grown up in a sketchy neighborhood in Portland, and he first landed in the midst of trouble when he was seven. He was walking down a block where he’d gone many times before—but he was wearing the wrong color. Gangs had recently taken over the area, and you showed your allegiance, or lack of it, with your wardrobe. Peter was wearing red. He should have had on blue, according to the older kids who surrounded him and began threatening him with baseball bats.

A rival gang intervened and drove off the others. But in return they told Peter he’d better join their ranks—or face the consequences. He joined.

In his late teens he was arrested for a crime at a local shop. He didn’t give the details, but it was violent enough that he did time in Long Creek Youth Development Center, Portland’s juvenile detention facility. When he was released, he went back to the shop to apologize to the owner. “He saw me and started yelling at me, telling me to get the ---- out,” he said. “I said, wait man, I know what I did was wrong. I came to apologize.” He managed to make the man hear him. That was all that mattered, that his apology be heard. It was the most important thing in his life just then.

I’ve been doing one of those intense, year-long spiritual programs, where meditating on a daily lesson will, I hope, bring me bit-by-bit closer to the divine. It’s been hard, really hard, but also amazing. I have 47 days to go.

Today’s lesson is “My heart is beating in the peace of God.” Sounds wonderful, right? Only problem is, my heart isn’t the least bit peaceful. Actually, it’s smokin’ angry. My husband and I had an exchange this morning. Let’s say it involved money. Let’s say one of us has been spending more than the other, and that it isn’t me.

Once he told a friend that “she keeps the household checkbook chained to her wrist.” Totally unfair. It made me sound like one of those wives who controls her husband’s every move. So I started being careful not to watch where all the money goes, to try to relax, to be generous, to trust that we’ll have enough every month. We do have enough.

But this is one of those months where our joint checkbook is suddenly, inexplicably empty—and we’ve had a string of them recently.

Fortunately, I have a plan.

I retreat to my study, where Jeff isn’t likely to bother me. I position myself in an open spot where I can move freely. And then I begin to rage.

I stand with my feet apart, swinging my arms, a little bent over, screaming obscenities interlaced with why why why? All of this is in silence, of course. But I breathe out hard through my mouth with each insult and cuss word.

It takes about 45 seconds before I’m spent, though it seems much longer. Tired, I flop into a chair. Am I finished? Can I get up, go downstairs, and act normal? Do I feel lighter? No? I rage again, until I do.

I stumbled on the therapeutic value of these two-minute tantrums a few years ago, when I was caring for my elderly mother. My mom was so wonderful—funny, loving, and demanding of me in an annoying, endearing way. For most of her life she could run circles around me. But in her last years, helping her do the simplest of tasks ate up incredible amounts of time.

On my trips home she always greeted me with an imposing to-do list. One day I rushed her through breakfast and bundled her up for an eye appointment. We had six other errands to run that day. Settled in the car finally, I saw that we were only five minutes later than planned. We’d make it to the doctor’s office mostly on time. But Mom gave me a plaintive look. “I forgot my purse,” she said.

It was in her apartment, five flights up. “Do you really need it?” I asked.

She just looked at me.

I pulled the car back into her parking space and went to get the purse.

As it happened, the previous week I’d seen a friend suffering through a tantrum with her two-year-old, who was throwing herself on the floor and wailing. I was having a bad day too, and I longed to be able to let my feelings out with such abandon. As I walked back through the parking lot to my mom’s apartment building, I realized I was alone. And I silently began to rage, swinging my arms and stamping my feet.

Finished, I couldn’t believe how much better I felt. I retrieved my mother’s purse and gave it to her with a pleasant, “Okay, now we’re ready.”

Having an occasional private tantrum has since become part of my spiritual practice. I’ve even gotten to the point where I can step out of sight somewhere and take care of business in 15 seconds. No religious text or guru’s guidebook I’ve read mentions the value of letting yourself give in to anger in some safe, solitary spot. But how am I supposed to find inner peace without an occasional cleansing rage? It’s like one of my favorite Facebook posts says: “I believe in peace and love, but I also cuss.”

Going back downstairs after my venting session, it occurred to me that the empty checkbook was not just Jeff’s fault. Not at all. I make my share of frivolous purchases. Looking at Jeff in his ratty old shorts, I have to admit that he’s pretty frugal. As he’s fond of pointing out, we’re housed, we’re well fed, we have no dire worries—and we’re more comfortable and far safer than most people in the world. For the first time since waking this morning, I could really consider letting my heart begin to beat in the peace of God. I sat down at our kitchen table and, with only an occasional grimace, began paying the monthly bills.